


Nolite te bastardes carborundorum - a b99 Handmaid’s Tale AU

by meepmorpperaltiago



Category: Brookyln Nine Nine
Genre: Angst, So much angst, The Handmaid's Tale - Freeform, Trauma, angst with a (vaguely) happy ending, it's a metaphor but still, please let me know if there are any more tags or warnings I should use, very brief violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 15:33:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16642931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meepmorpperaltiago/pseuds/meepmorpperaltiago
Summary: Gilead takes over in the b99 Universe. In a new and cruel world, Jake and Amy are torn apart and come back together





	1. Chapter 1

It’s strange, Jake thinks later, how one second can define a life. A second to kiss the person you love, a second to turn a light on or off. A second to run.  
He plays that awful morning over and over in his head, twisting and turning it, trying to wring out the answers that will bring her back. Like a never-ending movie, it plays as he awakes from often nightmare-filled nights, it plays as he wanders his too cold apartment (she would be freezing here, he thinks), it plays as he wanders the refugee centre with her picture, hoping that someone coming out of the hell that was once his home will have caught a glimpse of her. Amy Santiago-Peralta. He says her name to them. For the most part, they stare blankly.

Turns out, the one person he initially decides not to approach, who has the appearance of a frightened bird that most former Handmaids have, has some answers for him. She tells him what he had already guessed – that Amy is a Handmaid, that she is now Ofrichard – but to even hear that she is still alive sparks hope in his chest that he tries to keep small, for fear that it will eventually burn into a flame that would destroy him. She’s alive. She’s still sane. She could escape. The impossible dream that he keeps close to his heart. 

He remembers the day, in a different world, where suddenly all the women he knew were turned away from their jobs, when they had their accounts frozen and their cards declined. 

He remembers the tears emerging in Holt’s eyes at what he was forced to do. He remembers holding Amy so tightly as she cried. He remembers thinking it couldn’t get any worse. 

Whilst the fraying film reel in his mind plays on and on, he thinks about how they almost escaped what is for now their fate. How they almost made it, hearts pounding, knowing this  
would be their only chance. Then Amy fell. She tripped, while he dashed on, thinking she was right behind him. They got her before he could run back. In one second, his entire world shattered onto a dark, cold floor.


	2. Part 2

It’s strange, Amy thinks in that moment, how colour can define a world. The now-shattered kaleidoscope that was her old life. That god-forsaken red, the colour of the wounds that have been slashed into all of them. And now, the never-ending white that’s in front of her.

She can feel the grey, wet snow seeping into her boots, but all she knows it that she has to keep running, into the endless, black night. The stars are all gone from the sky. All she can hear is her breath, her boots hitting the ground. She’s lost all sense of direction, but it doesn’t matter, as long as she gets away. She has to get away. 

She once saw another Handmaid try to escape, a blur of scarlet and white in a black car, running over anyone who crossed her. She lost her hand. She was apparently promised that it would be much worse next time. The tiny spark of hope that had lived within Amy since she was taken, since the Red Centre, since she was shipped off to who knows where, to be forced to carry the children of monsters, and to then have them ripped from her, was quelled that day. 

It started to flicker when Graham thrust those keys into her hand. Her only friend, the only person in the house who treated her like a human being, was eventually her salvation. 

When she heard the engine start, it was like her heart started beating again. She knew the risk. But she had to take it. 

When she got far enough, she abandoned the car and just ran. Now, her white hat falls into the snow. She feels freedom for the first time in a year.   
She knows she can make it if she just keeps going, fighting against her burning muscles in a way that she’s not been able to fight against the world since they took her. Eventually, she reaches what looks like a road to her blurring eyes. As she collapses to the ground, her world changes from white and red to golden, as the sun rises on a new day.


	3. Part 3

In one second, the broken pieces of Jake’s soul start to come back together. He doesn’t dare to hope when he hears the phone ring, or when he hears that it’s someone he knows to be from the refugee centre. But just four words bring back a hope that has dimmed and dimmed over the past year. “Your wife is here.” They’d found her collapsed just beyond the border, exhausted, bruised and broken but alive, so very alive. 

Everything is a blur as he rushes to where she is, to where their reunion is, to where the part of his heart that Gilead ripped away is. When he sees her at the end of a long corridor, in a tattered red dress, her hair a complete mess, still so beautiful, they both burst into tears. 

When Amy sees him, her world bursts into all of the colours of the rainbow. They rush forwards, holding on so tightly, anchoring each other to the ground. They can barely speak, but through their tears they promise to never be separated again. 

It’s not an easy road to recovery and Amy knows that part of her will never be the same. The fear that first gripped onto her heart when she was taken, which grew at the Red Centre, when she first heard the dreaded title that was her identity for a year and understood what it meant, that will never quite let go. As well as the therapy offered to all those who escaped the horrors of Gilead, she ends up at a support group for other former Handmaids and they find a quiet strength in each other that helps them to soldier on, in spite of everything they’ve been through. And she has Jake.

Wonderful Jake, who holds her hand every step of the way, who is patient and understanding and always, always there to keep the monsters inside of her at bay. They move into a new place, for a fresh start. They took her wedding and engagement rings, but he’d bought new ones long before she escaped, as a way of holding on to the hope that they would be reunited. He proposes for a second time and they renew their vows on a starry night, so much like the ceremony they had so long ago, in what now feels like a different world. And, in spite of everything that has happened since that beautiful night, she still believes with all of her heart and soul the words that she spoke then: “Life is unpredictable. Not everything is in our control, but as long as you’re with the right people, you can handle anything. And you, Jake Peralta, are the right person for me.”


End file.
